Sarajevo: rooted in the collapse of Yugoslavia, but with themes that cross borders and generations: identity, betrayal and loyalty

Running at Theatre on the in Sandton, 8-18 October 2025, it is play about love, friendship, and the war that tried to erase them.

By CityLife Arts Writer
Sarajevo is a powerful new staging at Theatre on the Square, currently running, 9 – 18 October 2025. Written by Aimée Mica Komorowsky and directed by Thorsten Wedekind, the production brings together an ensemble of celebrated South African and international talent. Bookings are available via Webtickets or directly with the theatre.

About Sarajevo:

In every war there are bodies counted, cities destroyed, and histories disputed. Theatre however reminds us of what statistics cannot: the fragile miracle of being human together.

Sarajevo is that reminder. A haunting play about three childhood friends, bound by love, fractured by war, and remembered by the lens of a foreign journalist, until even the camera itself becomes complicit. It is a story of neighbours turned strangers, of friendship stretched across fault-lines of faith, and of the human cost of borders drawn in blood.

Though rooted in the collapse of Yugoslavia, the play speaks to themes that cross borders and generations: identity, betrayal, loyalty, and the stubborn longing to hold onto something slipping away. It bears witness to how conflict reshapes memory, how relationships fracture under the weight of ideology, and how history continues to haunt the present.

Born of Wounds, Written in Witness

The play’s journey began in lived trauma. In the final year before Yugoslavia’s disintegration, playwright Aimée Mica Komorowsky bore witness to a world unraveling. Out of fragments of memory and grief, out of unanswered questions, grew a work of theatre capable of carrying both intimacy and history.

Over a decade, Sarajevo has evolved, from personal wound to global testimony. In 2018, it was invited to the international symposium 21st Century Reflections on Sexual Violence in Wars and its Transgenerational and Transnational Impact. Since then, it has travelled stages from Austria’s Strawantz Festival to Cape Town’s Alexander Bar, bearing witness, resisting forgetting, and creating space for collective mourning and reckoning.

Now, Sarajevo steps into its next chapter: Johannesburg, before journeying onward to Toronto and Edinburgh.

In Memory

The production honours Anné Mariè du Preez Bezdrob (1951–2016), the South African author, UN officer, and journalist who lived through the Bosnian War and chronicled its horrors in her memoir Sarajevo Roses. Her words echo still:

“The characters were entirely credible… the ambience transported me back to the terrifying reality of war-torn Sarajevo and the inspiring human endurance I encountered.”

It also remembers Paul Lowe (1963–2024), the award-winning photojournalist who documented the Bosnian conflict with unflinching honesty, reminding the world of the faces behind the statistics.

The Ensemble

Sarajevo gathers an ensemble of remarkable talent:

• Jeremy Richard – multi-award-winning actor, returning to a role he first inhabited years ago.
• Alistair Moulton Black – versatile stage and screen presence, from The Crown to Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians.
• Ivan Nedeljkovic – actor and model, stepping into the layered role of Slobo.
• Aimée Mica Komorowsky – playwright and performer, at the very heart of the story she birthed.
• Louise Saint-Claire – legendary actress, voice artist, and dialect coach whose craft spans four decades.
• Thorsten Wedekind – director, actor, casting director, and industry veteran guiding this chapter of the play’s journey.

Details

Date:9th – 18th October 2025
Venue: Theatre on the Square, Johannesburg
Ticketing: Available via Webtickets or directly with the theatre